Bob Leamnson (RLEAMNSON@umassd.edu)
Wed, 18 Aug 1999 11:14:30 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 11:14:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Bob Leamnson <RLEAMNSON@umassd.edu> Subject: Still more brain work
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Happily, the discussion of learning as brain change has prompted
some lurker response. Bernard Colo's statement regarding, "the
three levels of learning, cognitive, affective and psychomotor" is a
psychological approach to the general problem of learning. All three
of these involve the brain, and I would suggest nearly identical brain
changes, even though they are taking place in different modules. The
"three level" metaphor subtly suggests that there are different "kinds"
of learning. The brain model attempts to go in the opposite direction
of subdividing learning into kinds or categories, and seeks to find the
commonalties in learning.
If the brain changes at the cellular level are the same in kind for
learning to play the cello as learning calculus (and I believe the are),
that fact should have significance for instructional design. Is it
necessary to divide learning into three kinds, or sixteen, or sixteen
hundred (to use William James' example), if in fact the learning brain
is essentially doing the same thing all the time, but just in different
places?
One outcome of the brain change theory would renounce
Bernard's statement, "Knowledge is...learned passively or actively."
To use Pat Cross' famous statement, "Passive learning is an
oxymoron." Brain change theory implies that a subject is learning
only when doing the unfamiliar. Hearing words, converting words to
symbols, and using psychomotor networks to convert the symbols to
marks, all involve using old hard-wired networks. It can all be done
without waking up the cognition modules of the brain. There may be
some short term memory of the words transcribed, but this
disappears very quickly and the brain has not really stabilized any
new or previously unused connections. The conclusion would be
that no learning (in any serious sense) had been done.
When Bernard uses the word "imprinted," ("Getting that
information out again implies that it was imprinted for long term
storage") I would say that this is a good synonym for "stabilizing
labile synapses through repeated use."
Bob Leamnson
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